


beginning at the ending

by Echo (Lyrecho)



Category: Kingdom Hearts, Tales of Symphonia
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Kvar Is Here For Like Five Seconds, Mickey Is From Post-BBS Pre-KH1, Not a crack fic, Pre-Canon, So Is Dirk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-12 20:23:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19952302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyrecho/pseuds/Echo
Summary: Facing down Kvar alone, exsphere torn from her skin and husband off fighting somewhere else, Anna Irving fully expects to die.She certainly doesn't expect Mickey Mouse to crash land in front of her - but well, to be fair, no one does.|Tumblr||Twitter|





	beginning at the ending

**Author's Note:**

> i want it on record that rar enabled me

Anna doesn't know what she expects to see, when her vision finally clears. The afterlife, maybe. Kratos, if she's lucky - one final glimpse of her husband before she passes on. The guilt and horror of losing herself to the exsphere, of lashing out at her son, her Lloyd, it eats at her, and she thinks that maybe, she doesn't deserve to be lucky.  
  
None of these thoughts matter, a second later, because. Because she doesn't know what she was expecting to see, but a giant mouse with a giant key? Absolutely not it.  
  
"What the fuck," she says, with feeling.  
  
The mouse makes a scandalised sound. "Language!" It says, and it's voice is just. Okay. _Is_ this the afterlife?  
  
The Desians that had stood at the edges of her berserk rampage, avoiding her reach to shoot at her, seem to have equally No Idea as to what the fuck is going on, but Anna will give them this much: they recover way quicker than she does. One particularly brave soldier steps forward with his gun at the ready, only to find himself on the ground a moment later - Anna blinks, and the mouse has moved. His key glows with lightning, and the entire clearing lights up as he sets it loose. Somehow, none of the electricity hits her, even as it arcs from Desian to Desian, conducted by their armour.  
  
" _What the fuuuuuuck,_ " she repeats in a whisper, and staggers to her feet. So far, this - mouse??? What the fuck. What the _fuck_ \- has been nothing but helpful, but. Still. It's a mouse, and she's alone, and it's a _mouse_.  
  
She feels like that's a point that needs reiterating.  
  
"Aw, golly," the mouse says, and looks back at her once it's done surveying its carnage. "Are you okay there, ma'am? Whatever that thing on you was, it sure wasn't very good!" It holds up a familiar crystal as it says this, and while Anna's brain is midway through processing that the mouse just called her ma'am, this is where it breaks.  
  
Shaking, she looks down, and frantic eyes find her hand. Her hand, with no exsphere, no crawling veins of _ick_. Just bare skin. Just her hand.  
  
What!! The fuck!!  
  
Hot tears prick at the corners of her eyes, and she gasps for air around the sharp, painful lump that wells up in her throat. No exsphere - she should be feeling relief, and maybe on some level she is, but all she can think is that her boat on rocky waters just had its hull knocked out completely. By a mouse.  
  
"Ma'am?" It steps closer, and it looks - concerned. How??? "Are you doing okay there?" He holds her exsphere out. "I unlocked it from you because it looked like it was causing you some mighty pain, but you can have it back, if that's what has you so worried? It is yours, after all - I have no intention of keeping it!" It smiles.  
  
Anna wants Kratos. She wants her husband, she wants him to come here so she can babble out the apologies and pleas turning circles in her mind, wants him to come here so she can beg him to _find Lloyd_ , find wherever it is he and Noishe have run off to, and _please_ , by all the spirits, _let them be safe.  
_  
What she doesn't want is _that stupid rock_ , or _the mouse holding it out to her!!  
_  
She goes to say as much, but trying to speak sends sharp aches through her sandpaper rough throat - anything louder than a whisper scrapes like a whetstone on her shattered edges, and she's very deliberately not going to think about why that is.  
  
Don't think about turning into a monster, Anna. Don't think about your voice twisted into howls, screaming years of unfair pain into release. Don't think about laughing as you lunged for your son. Don't think, don't think, _don't think_ -  
  
"Ma'am?"  
  
The mouse, still holding out the damn rock. So patient, so polite, what the fuck.  
  
"Anna," she croaks out, finally, deciding to just roll with it. Sure, whatever, she can deal until Kratos gets here. "Not ma'am."  
  
The mouse blinks, and then the smile it dropped for surprise becomes a wide grin. "You can call me Mickey!" It - he??? - says, and holds out his other hand, the empty one. Anna takes it on autopilot, and he shakes her hand enthusiastically.  
  
"Right," she says, and pulls her hand back as quickly as she can without - hopefully? - being inoffensive. "Okay. Sure thing, Mickey."  
  
Before she can withdraw completely, he gently tucks the damn exsphere into her fingers, and she's left with the stone - cold, inert, and panic inducing - in her own hands.  
  
Her breath comes faster, her heartbeat kicking up a notch from 'human' to 'hummingbird,' and it takes her a genuine minute to realise that she can't feel any of that constant, parasitic drain she'd almost forgotten she'd ever lived without.  
  
She startles, and looks up from the exsphere to narrow her eyes at Mickey, who doesn't even attempt to hide the fact that he's been watching her closely.  
  
"Golly, are you okay, Anna?" He asks, and she shakes her head - not a negation, exactly (though she wouldn't, by any measure, call herself okay); more just clearing her head.  
  
"What?" She says, and shakes her exsphere in his face. "What did you say you did to my exsphere?"  
  
"Unlocked it from you, and then locked it back up again, nice and tight!" Mickey's voice is pure cheer. "That's kinda what a keyblade does, you see?" He waggles his giant, starry key, like she'd have somehow been able to miss it.  
  
"Keyblade," Anna says, testing the word out in her mouth. That's not any kind of weapon she's ever heard of, that Kratos has ever told her about in all his tales of Kharlan.  
  
To be fair, he's never told her about giant talking mice, either, so Anna thinks there's a good chance that whatever the fuck is going on here, it's something entirely new, and somehow she is the one 'lucky' enough to be encountering it.  
  
Though maybe she shouldn't be so flippant towards her luck, so sarcastic. Mouse or not, she'd been halfway to losing herself to the exsphere when Mickey turned up - from wherever it was he'd turned up.  
  
Count your blessings, Anna, she told herself. You've never exactly had that many.  
  
Kratos, Lloyd, and now this - her life, if for just a little while longer. Three miracles in a lifetime is more than most get. No complaining about the mouse!  
  
"So," she starts, and pauses, not sure how to phrase her question. "So it won't...activate, again?"  
  
Mickey shakes his head. "Not unless another Keyblade Master comes along and unlocks it," he says, and well. _Okay_. Anna has like, zero fucking clue what the hell a _Keyblade Master_ is, and only the tiniest piece of context ever to try and form a picture of one in her mind, but. Okay! Even if Kvar were to manage to drag her back to the ranch today, her exsphere was as good as broken, was what she was getting from Mickey.  
  
The relief that thought brings her is short lived, however, because as if her thoughts had summoned him - with a smile and a call of her name that leaves hatred like oil choking deep in her mind and shuddering slick down her spine from her tongue, Kvar melts out of the shadows. He spares his fallen men barely a glance and a curled lip, talking absently at her as he predates around the edges of the clearing.  
  
"You're a hard woman to track down," he says, and Anna is frozen in a moment of fear stabbed by hatred, a moment of sheer _oh fuck_. Where's her husband, where's Kratos, _where is he_ \- "To be honest, with this unit wiped out, we would have missed you entirely if not for the spectacular light show Aurion used to bring them down. Such theatrics aren't in his usual tastes." A smile in his voice, on his lips, and Anna trembles with just how much she wants to claw it off, "was he panicked, dear? How typical of an inf-"  
  
He falls silent, the smile slipping off of his face for an expression Anna can only label as 'struck dumb' as he finally, truly glances her way, and for a moment she can't fathom why he'd be looking her way like that, before she remembers - right. Mickey. Giant mouse with a giant key.  
  
"What," he says flatly, and Anna hates to be feeling any sort of kinship with Kvar, but!! Yeah! Exactly that!  
  
"I'm Mickey," says Anna's only possible ally right now, and he sounds so honestly on edge and wary that she wants to cry. Fuck. She's not alone. Even if Kratos is fuck knows where right now, she has her new mouse buddy. _Don't cry, Anna, don't you dare cry._ "What do you want with Anna."  
  
It isn't a question, and Anna feels a stab of baffled affection. Mickey's known her for all of five seconds, and he's ready to square up for her without a second thought.  
  
Though, glancing at him sideways, keeping most of her attention on Kvar - she's not sure how much of Mickey's tension is about her, and how much of it is about something personal to him that has no real place in the here and now, because he has that same far away look she sees in Kratos' eyes so often, that she knows she drifts into every now and again.  
  
_A mouse with PTSD_ is one of the wildest thoughts Anna has ever had, but hey - she can't judge. He clearly isn't a normal mouse. For all she knows, he's as much of an experiment as she was, just in a different sense of the word.  
  
"Hey," she rasps. "Mickey."  
  
He flinches a little, like he'd forgotten she was right beside him, and something in his shoulders relaxes. He doesn't drop out of his battle ready stance, nor does he turn to look at her, but he does look less like he's about to snap in half like wire stretched too far.  
  
"Get back, Anna," he says, finally looking her way for just a second, and though he calls her by her name, she can't help but wonder who he's seeing in his mind's eye as he stares at her. "I won't let him take you."  
  
Across the clearing, Kvar laughs. "Oh?" He says, and though his eyes are still a little wide, he seems to have regained whatever sense of balance seeing Mickey had made him lose. "So confident, little mouse."  
  
Mickey's face is set, mouth pulled down tight. He looks - well. He looks ready to kill. He looks capable of it, too; his weapon doesn't seem so much like a toy as he angles it so moonlight captures its every sharp edge.  
  
"I know men like you," he tells Kvar, quiet and low. "I don't know what your end goal is, and I don't need to. You're hurting people to reach it, and that's enough." He steps forward, and though he barely comes up past Anna's waist, his stance makes it clear - he's acting as her shield. "I know the price of failure well," he says. "I won't pay it again, not when there's a life at stake. I'm not letting you touch Anna."  
  
Kvar is silent, for a moment. Then -  
  
"Big words, for a little mouse," he sneers. "You think you can best me with that little trinket? I am a Grand Cardinal - and you? Not only are you a _mouse_ , you are _alone_ -"  
  
"I rather think," a voice echoes out from the dark, so familiar and welcome that Anna wants to fall to her knees and weep, "that you will find you are the one alone here, Kvar."  
  
And then Kratos is standing beside her, and all is well.

  
  
-x-

  
  
The night starts off well, and then, as the skies split apart, in some great show of dramatic irony, everything falls to pieces.  
  
Mana signatures - dozens upon dozens of them, and Kratos knows that they are found. Anna goes pale when he tells her, and her eyes find Lloyd, curled up in their bed, sleeping deeply.  
  
"What do we do?" She whispers, and her hands are claws that rip into her own skin, her fists are clenched so tight. " _What do we do?_ "  
  
Kratos doesn't know. He can't tell her that, though - don't be a defeatist _now_ , Aurion, think of something, anything, _keep Anna safe, keep Lloyd safe, keep the both of them breathing, their hearts still beating_ \- nothing else matters. _No one_ else matters.  
  
And just like that, he is calm. He has his goal. He knows what he must do: eliminate all that stands in the way of achieving said goal.  
  
Mana thrums through his body, and twin phantom aches ping in his back as he unfurls his wings. "I'll meet the main force before they can reach us," he says, and Judgement hums a ready song in the back of his mind. They already know they're here; no point in subtlety, not when he just needs to kill as many possible pursuers as he can, as fast as he can. "Once I attack, any other units will be sent out as back up. That's when you run, okay?"  
  
A frown is tugging at Anna's face - she does not like the idea of seperating, of him leaving her behind, and truthfully, neither does he...  
  
But his gaze falls on Lloyd, and Anna's face sets into determination.  
  
"Okay," she says, and leans up to kiss him. "You stay safe?"  
  
"I always do."  
  
He leaves before he wastes anymore time.  
  
The night air is cool, and tastes of the rain that hasn't truly started pouring just yet. Kratos flies - faster than he think he ever has before, and the rage inside him makes it easy to draw his sword, to channel his mana, to speak the words weighty on his lips as the Desian squadrons he targets freeze; clearly, either Kvar hadn't told them just what they'd be facing, or they hadn't fully conceptualised just what chasing Kratos Aurion down meant. They are, all of them, completely stunned in the presence of one of the four Seraphim.  
  
No hesitation. Strike them down.  
  
Don't think about how young they all were, under those helmets. Old enough to hate - old enough to hunt his family down like dogs, and that's all that matters.  
  
When this gets back to Mithos, the destruction Kratos is causing here...he won't be happy. That is, maybe, the part that hurts the most - not so much the idea of hurting Mithos, because at this point, pain is just a fact of all their lives, but more so the idea that Mithos would see this as a betrayal, not understanding just why Kratos is so willing to go this far.  
  
Mithos, who has gone so far for family, not understanding why Kratos must protect his wife, his child. Of all the cruelties this world has inflicted on them, this loss might just be the worst.  
  
No time to spend mourning that which is lost, though, not when there are still things he seeks to keep. Judgement is ozone and heat on his tongue as he drives it through the army before him, and then he's back in the air, on his way to meet up with Anna, and -  
  
More Desians?  
  
He pauses, hovering, and casts his senses over the mountain range.  
  
That. That's a lot of Desians.  
  
Concern itches in every corner of his mind - _just how did Kvar get command of so many men? Why did Mithos allow it? Or - was it Yuan, who Mithos left most of the on-world micromanaging to, last Kratos knew?_ \- so he reaches out further, going beyond the physical to hunt down a specifc, if faint, mana signature.  
  
Anna. There, not far from their house. Concerning, but more so: she's alone, in a manner of speaking. Desians crawl all around her, but perhaps more pressingly, _where is Lloyd?_  
  
A moment of hesitation, of indecision. His wife, his son - who needs his help most immediately? Who will be fine without him? Anna surrounded by enemies - but Lloyd, who knows where?  
  
And then, where Anna is, a familiar taste: the build-up of mana before release, tasting of storms; a high level lightning spell, and as it takes down the Desians surrounding her, Kratos feels a moment of hope. As far as he knows, there are no Desian mages with that kind of power available to them - at least, not living in Sylvarant, the declining world - and no human has had that kind of power in millenia, and likely never will again, not without Volt backing them up.  
  
That leaves only one option, and it's the option that leaves Kratos breathing a little easier. _Yuan_ , he thinks, and even though he can't sense any of that familiar spark of Yuan's mana signature, he knows that his brother has long since learned to mask his presence - if he's trying to help out on the side, keeping this slight defection hidden, stealth makes sense. At the very least, if there's one thing he can trust from Yuan, it's that he won't allow harm to come to Anna - not until he's spoken to Kratos directly, at the very least. He tries his underhanded tactics, but the fact is he's never been very good at them.  
  
Regardless, with Anna left in Yuan's capable hands, that leaves Kratos free to hunt down his son.  
  
Lloyd is too young, currently, to have developed enough of a mana signature to be able to find him that way, so Kratos searches for someone far older, just as familiar to him: Noishe, who hasn't willingly left Lloyd's side for more than ten minutes at a time since he was born. If he finds one, he finds the other.  
  
He dives for the location as soon as he picks it up - he's expecting to find his son distraught and in the hands of Desians he'll need to kill as cleanly as possible (Lloyd's faced quite enough trauma for one night, he thinks), so it comes as a genuine shock to come across him, smiling, in the arms of a concerned looking dwarf.  
  
That concern on the dwarf's face snaps to a dazed sort of shock once Kratos touches down before him, and as Lloyd wriggles about in his arms to reach for Kratos with a victorious crow of " _Daddy!_ " Kratos becomes very aware of his wings, spread out and lit up for the world to see.  
  
"Well," says the dwarf. "Well."  
  
"My son," says Kratos, and tries to keep his tone as civil as possibly can.  
  
"Eh? Oh - right." The dwarf shakes himself a little - Kratos watches him put his mental fortitude back together in the space of about fifteen seconds, and at any other time it would have been amusing. "Now that's a good lad, back to your da."  
  
Kratos goes to take Lloyd into his arms when he stiffens, suddenly very, _very_ aware of a mana signature he isn't sure how he missed before.  
  
"Actually," he says, stepping back, voice low and gentle, "would you mind taking care of Lloyd for a bit longer? It seems my business here is not yet done." And the battlefield is no place for a child.  
  
The dwarf stares at him for what feels like a painfully long time. "Aye," he says finally. "I can do that."  
  
"Please, get him somewhere safe," Kratos says. "Do not worry about the location. I'll be able to find you."  
  
The dwarf squints, like he isn't sure if that was meant to come across as threatening or reassuring (both. The answer is both), but before he can speak agian, Kratos is already gone, flying so fast the rain can't touch him, his blood boiling rage in his veins, his heart beating a chant of _kvar kvar kvar_ against his ribs.  
  
He cools his head enough to not just barge in blindly, and it's then, lurking in the edges of the clearing, dampening his own mana signature, that Kratos gets - well. Maybe not the biggest shock of his life, but it's sure as hell Up There.  
  
Is that. A mouse?  
  
The taste of expended magic - the lingering electricity in the air - they all scream Yuan, but they lead back to a rodent with a giant key. Kratos isn't sure how to process that, so he doesn't. Shove the weirdness away for another day, focus on the problem that's in the here and now:  
  
_Kvar_.  
  
The mouse steps forward to defend Anna, and as Kvar speaks his poison, Kratos takes his cue to enter the stage. He isn't fond of employing dramatics - that doesn't mean he can't be good at them, especially when they're oh so effective. Watching the colour drain from Kvar's face is satisfying in a way few things are, these days.  
  
Kratos flicks his eyes down to the mouse, who meets his judging gaze with a determined grin and raised blade held in a relaxed but steady grip. A confident fighter, then. Good.  
  
Kratos has trusted his back to weirder. "Your specialty?" He asks, and after a brief pause, the mouse's grin widens.  
  
"Magic," he says, and Kratos nods.  
  
"I'll take the melee, then," he says, with great satisfaction. He's better with swords, anyway - and while he's never been a man fond of violence, just imagining driving his blade through Kvar's cold, empty heart sets alight a blood red glee inside him he hadn't realised he was still capable of feeling. The last time had been Mar -  
  
"Cover Anna," he snarls, and rushes forward before his thoughts have the time to turn into something they'll all regret.  
  
The night's cool air whips around him as he unsheathes his blade, and Kratos can feel the buzz of mana in it. He isn't sure what the purpose of it is - it sure doesn't feel like any buff he's had cast on him before - but the way Kvar's instinctive defensive strike, meant to force Kratos to back up, simply sheers right off of what Kratos now sees is a shield answers that question.  
  
Kvar doesn't look quite so confident now. Kratos is glad his back is to Anna, in that moment - he's grinning, he knows he is, and this is one of those parts of him that she knows, conceptually, exists, but that he desperately, desperately never wanted her to see. Never wanted to show her.  
  
"You shouldn't have come out here," he whispers, and Kvar's expression flickers before setting into something Kratos knows well - mulish, obstinate pride. "You should have just stayed in your ranch, Kvar. We never would have sought you out deliberately. But now you're here, and there's no reason to hold back."  
  
Kvar sneers. "I am a Grand Cardinal of Cruxis," he hisses, "and I will not be bested here, by the likes of inferior beings such as you."  
  
"You stand before one of the Four Seraphim of Cruxis, _Grand Cardinal_ ," Kratos hisses, and what was meant as dry humour warps into threat under his anger. "Show the position a little respect."  
  
He lungs forward. Kvar dodges his strike - just barely - but with his focus on Kratos, the mouse takes the advantage.  
  
" _Light_!" He shouts, and an attack similar to Judgement flashes down to impact on Kvar - smaller, weaker, comparatively, but cast so much quicker, and still its own brand of effective, from Kvar's screams.  
  
Kratos doesn't hesitate. He takes the created opening, and slides his blade home. Warmth floods his grip, and Kvar's scream chokes into something pathetic and gurgling.  
  
"Know this, Kvar," Kratos says, and pulls him close, lips pressed right to his ear. "You were not bested by inferior beings. You were _annihilated_ by them." His mouth curves into a smile, and from Kvar's twitch, he can feel it. "Rest easy with that knowledge, Grand Cardinal."  
  
He lets Kvar fall - from his sword, from his arms. He crumples onto the dirt, lifeless and broken, and a part of Kratos can't help but feel that this was far easier than it should have been.  
  
"Aw, gee," the mouse says, and Kratos turns back to see him frowning at Kvar's body. "It's too bad."  
  
Kratos gets the feeling he wasn't really being addressed there, and honestly, dealing with a mouse's moral crisis is literally about the last thing he feels like doing in that moment, so he just leaves his ally to it.  
  
"Anna," he says, instead focusing on the most important thing in that clearing and rushing for it - his wife.  
  
"Kratos," she gasps out. "Lloyd - do you - _Lloyd_. Have you - have you - ?"  
  
She can barely get a coherent sentence out, and she sounds like she's about to cry. She looks like she's already been crying, a little bit, actually.  
  
"Lloyd is safe," he reassures her. "We can see him just as soon as we're done here."  
  
Pure, unbridled relief lights up her face before it darkens once more, and she slumps. She looks away from him, and Kratos feels himself tense up once more, because he knows his wife, and he knows her feelings, and how she tries to hide them - he knows Anna when she's trying to hide her shame.  
  
"Anna?"  
  
"I attacked him," she whispers, voice full of horror. "They took my exsphere, and I -" she cuts herself off with a sob, and Kratos feels dizzy. Dizzy and numb.  
  
"How -" he croaks, and clears his throat. "If they...if they took your exsphere, then how..." _How are you still here, still human, still Anna?_ But, no, a quick look over proves she's telling the truth - the skin of her hand is bare, and she holds her exsphere gingerly in one hand, like she's barely refraining from flinging it into the undergrowth.  
  
"I don't really know how," Anna admits, and sends an uncertain look the mouse's way, which.  
  
What?  
  
"Aw, don't you remember, Anna?" The mouse says. "I unlocked the - exsphere? - from you, and then I locked it up tight."  
  
"Oh, I remember," she reassures him. "That doesn't mean that any of what I remember makes sense. At all."  
  
The mouse rolls his eyes like Anna's the one being silly here, and spirits does Kratos' head hurt.  
  
"Don't you have any tales of Keybearers in this world?" He asks, looking between them curiously, and Kratos stiffens at the specific weight the mouse puts on the word _world_. "I didn't notice it at first, gosh - landing here got me really distracted - but there's something really weird about the heart of this world. Half of it is locked away somewhere else - only a Keybearer could do something like that." The mouse frowns, and puts a thoughtful hand on his chin. "Most world these days don't really know about keyblades, but the ones that produce Keybearers? Well of course they know!" He looks at them expectantly.  
  
"Mickey, I hate to break this to you," Anna says evenly. "But literally nothing you just said made any sense to me whatsoever."  
  
Kratos lifts his chin in agreement, and the mouse - Mickey? - deflates.  
  
"Drat," he mutters. "And here I was, thinking I'd finally found a solid lead."  
  
Kratos narrows his eyes and considers the mouse before him. "What did you mean by worlds?"  
  
"Hmm? Oh - huh?"  
  
"Worlds," Kratos repeated, and Mickey chuckles nervously. "You said _worlds_. I'd like some clarification." Does he - _know_ , about Tethe'alla? It's possible, but...the way he'd said it...it just didn't sound like it was Sylvarant and Tethe'alla that he'd meant. Kratos had genuinely no idea what to do with that.  
  
"Um," Mickey says, and as he stalls and it becomes increasingly obvious he's going to have to force answers from the mouse - yes, dear, he knows Mickey saved your life, no, he won't be too mean - a glow erupts from within the mouse's jacket.  
  
Anna tenses, and Kratos moves without a second thought, flinging himself bodily in front of her.  
  
Mickey pays them no mind as his eyes widen, and he paws at his pocket until he's pulled out whatever it is, exactly, that's glowing.  
  
It's a chunk of crystal, and Kratos' first thought is _exsphere_ , but - no, the colour, size, and shape is all wrong.  
  
"What is that?" He barks out, uneasy.  
  
"It's what got me here," says Mickey, still looking slightly stunned. "A star shard. It helps with world traversal. It's kind of hard to control, though, so I don't really choose when it'll activate. Or where it'll take me -" he cuts himself off as the shard flares a brighter shade of gold. Kratos blinks stars from his eyes.  
  
"Anna!" Says Mickey, voice full of cheerful determination. "I'm glad I landed here in time to help you out!"  
  
"Um???" Anna says, which, yeah. Kratos is in wholehearted agreement. "I'm glad too? Thanks for. Saving my life?"  
  
And then he's. He's gone, literally lifted up into the air, a wink of light in the distance like a shooting star, and there's no proof at all that he wasn't just a very vivid shared hallucination.  
  
"What the _fuck_ ," Anna says fervently, and presses up against his side before sighing. "Do you think we'll ever see him again?"  
  
Kratos wonders if there's a polite way to say _I sure hope not_. If he's right, Mickey is the reason tonight didn't end far more poorly, but there's a limit to how much he can take. It'll be the joke to end all jokes if, after four thousand years of life, it's a talking mouse that finally breaks him.  
  
"Kratos?" Anna asks, hesitant and small. "What do we do now?"  
  
Good question, he thinks. The sun has just started to rise, and in the early pre-dawn grey, the carnage that surrounds them, slick with mud, is jarringly obvious.  
  
"We...we get Lloyd," he says finally, the first, most pressing object on the agenda. Anna nods - he feels the movement on his chest.  
  
"And then?"  
  
He thinks of that moment, during the battle, when he'd felt the flash of cast lightning and felt nothing but reassurance at the thought of his brother entering the battle.  
"We find Yuan," he says firmly. "We can't live on the run, not like this, not anymore."  
  
Anna pulls back, to look him in the face, rove her eyes over his features again and again, like she's searching for even the slightest hint of hesitation he didn't let slip into his words.  
  
"Okay," she says, finally. "Okay. Yuan."  
  
"We can trust him," he promises her.  
  
"I know," she says softly. "I believe you. I trust _you_." She leans forward and presses a swift, sweet, chaste kiss to the end of his nose. "Lloyd?" She asks, wide-eyed and hopeful.  
  
"Lloyd," he agrees. "I left him with a dwarf, so -"  
  
Anna lets out a cry of delight. "A real dwarf?" She asks gleefully.  
  
"As opposed to - what? A fictional dwarf?"  
  
An elbow to his side. "You know what I mean, don't be _silly_."  
  
"Yes, Anna. A real dwarf."  
  
"How'd you manage to convince them to take Lloyd?"  
  
"...He may have been under the impression I was. Some manner of holy spirit."  
  
"What??"  
  
"I had my wings out, Anna, I'd just flown all over looking for Lloyd -"  
  
"Oh my _god_ , you could have given him a _heart attack!_ "  
  
"Dwarves are a hardy people! And - and it's not like I _planned it_ , Anna -"  
  
Her laugh is bright and brilliant, and it's almost like some of the shadows that have dug their way home under her eyes over the past year have faded. "Ah," she says, a soft sigh. "I really do love you, you know." Eyes soft, voice unbearably fond.  
  
Kratos reaches down to take her hand, entwining his fingers with hers, sliding them home into the gaps where they fit perfectly. Where they've always belonged. "As I love you," he says, and presses a kiss to the back of her hand, where he's never been able to before - bare skin, no exsphere.  
  
He has no idea what the future could possibly hold for them - the looming weight of the parasite of the exsphere is gone, now, but Cruxis is only a more apparent threat now than the immediacy of Anna's death, and with one curveball in the form of a talking mouse already thrown into the mix, Kratos has, quite literally, no clue of what will happen next.  
  
But it doesn't matter.  
  
In that moment, he is happy. They are together. Soon, they will reunite with their son.  
  
All is well.


End file.
